Tag: AIRBUS

Airbus Creeps Towards Full-Year Delivery Goal with 18% Year-Over-Year Increase for October

Reuters reports that Airbus “needs to deliver 161 aircraft in the last two months of the year to reach its full-year delivery target, fractionally below the performance seen in the closing stages of last year.” Airbus’ monthly bulletin “confirmed it had delivered 71 aircraft in October, up 18% from the same month last year and bringing the total for the first 10 months to 559 jets.” In the final “two months of 2022, Airbus delivered 166 jets.” Agency Partners analyst Sash Tusa “wrote in a note that the company was not expected to change its full-year delivery target of 720 aircraft despite pressure on supplies of Pratt & Whitney engines.” Airbus last year “lowered and eventually abandoned its delivery goal due to supply constraints and started 2023 on a weak note, before deliveries accelerated over the summer.”
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Airbus Is Hiring Thousands of Workers for Aircraft Production Increase

Reuters reports that Airbus is better prepared for the challenge of securing enough people to handle jet production increases than it was before the pandemic, a senior executive said. The European planemaker plans a two-thirds increase in production of best-selling A320neo-family single-aisle jets to 75 a month in 2026 from 45 now. In Germany, its second-largest base, Airbus plans to hire 3,500 staff for the second year in a row to handle the ramp-up and feed projects on decarbonization and industrial systems.
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Airbus and Boeing Seek High-Skill Talent in India

Bloomberg reports that The Boeing Company and Airbus “are increasingly looking to India for highly-skilled, low-cost engineers to meet a boom in demand for aircraft and expand their manufacturing presence in the world’s fifth-largest economy.” Airbus is looking to hire 1,000 people in India in 2023, out of 13,000 globally. Boeing already employs approximately 18,000 people in India, including its suppliers.
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Senior Forecasts Strong Second Half as Demand Increases

Reuters reports that Senior “forecast a strong second half of the year on Monday, after adjusted profits for the first six months doubled, propelled by easing supply chain issues in its aircraft parts business and strong demand in the auto and power unit.” Customers for the engineering firm include The Boeing Company and Airbus, with Senior “benefiting from planemakers ramping up production to meet booming air travel demand.” First half adjusted profits for Senior “doubled to 17.6 million pounds ($22.62 million) on a reported basis.” A statement from the company read, “Planned aircraft build rate increases should lead to higher sales in H2 with supply chain challenges enduring but anticipated to be less severe towards the end of the year.”
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Airbus Deliveries Reportedly Up 6% for First Half of 2023

Reuters reports industry sources indicated on Thursday that Airbus deliveries “increased by 6% in the first half of the year to reach 316 aircraft. … The European planemaker delivered 72 planes in June, up 20% from 60 in the same month last year and up from 63 in May this year, they added. Airbus, which is targeting 720 deliveries for the year, declined to comment ahead of the publication of data on Friday.”
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Airbus to Research Superconductivity as a Road to Sustainability

Aviation International News reports that Airbus’s multi-path approach “to decarbonization took a new direction last week as the company highlighted recent work on superconductivity technology.” During its two-day Sustainability Summit held in Toulouse and Munich, “the airframer said it has joined with the European Laboratory for Particle Physics in a demonstrator program aimed at promoting the adoption of superconductivity and cryogenics in airborne electrical distribution systems.” CERN’s new project with Airbus, called the Superconductor for Aviation with Low Emissions (SCALE), “will evaluate how engineers can deploy superconductors to achieve greater energy efficiency for future aircraft systems.”
Full Story (Aviation International News)

Aerospace Parts Suppliers Not Yet Able to Support Airbus, Boeing Needs

Reuters reports that The Boeing Company and Airbus both have planned increases in jet output in 2023, but a recent Morgan Stanley survey of the aerospace supply chain industry says that will not be easy. The supply chain sector “seeks to speed up its recovery from a pandemic-led slowdown as a travel boom spurs demand for jets, inflationary pressures and labor availability are impeding their progress and have dampened sentiment, the survey showed.” Labor and parts shortages have blunted Boeing and Airbus from realizing their goals for increased jet production rates, with worker shortages cited as being the “biggest constraint” for suppliers.
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JUICE Prepares to Explore Jupiter’s Moons

Reuters reported that JUICE – which stands for JUpiter ICy Moons Explorer – “is one of the most important space missions of 2023.” Its aim “is to explore Jupiter’s moons to see if any can be lived on by humans.” The European Space Agency project team “behind JUICE held a major review this week and concluded the mission was ‘go for launch.’” JUICE will take “eight years to get to the giant planet Jupiter – where it will explore three of its moons.” The six-ton spacecraft “will make fly-bys, which means a close approach for observation without landing, of the moons Callisto, Ganymede and Europa.” It will then “settle permanently around Ganymede in late 2034.” The aim of the mission “is to find out if any of the moons are habitable and can support life.”
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Airbus Partners With Nanoracks for Commercial Space Station

Aviation Week reports that Europe’s Airbus Defense and Space “is joining a U.S. partnership led by Voyager Space-owned Nanoracks to develop and operate a commercial space station in low Earth orbit (LEO), one of four NASA-backed projects vying to host government research and commercial ventures after the International Space Station” is transitioned away from.
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Indigo Partners Warns that Supply Chain Challenges Could Last Until 2028

Aviation Week reports that Indigo Partners is warning “that aircraft supply chain issues could be prolonged as far out as 2028, which could cause challenges for airlines worldwide.” The company’s managing partner, William Franke, spoke at the CAPA Americas Aviation Summit in Ontario, California, on Wednesday and warned of the extended possibility of supply changes affecting the global aerospace industry.
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Planemakers Touting “Surge Capacity” Plans

In an analysis, Reuters reports that, with the aerospace industry still struggling “to tame post-COVID disruption,” both Airbus and The Boeing Company leaders had used the term “surge capacity” amid promises to increase factories’ resilience to supply disruptions. Surge capacity can involve expanding factory space and hiring more staff, but “the risk is that when demand slows the added capacity and inventory may no longer be profitable.”
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Japanese Airlines Make Use of Predictive Maintenance Platforms

Aviation Week reports that Japanese airlines such as All Nippon Airways (ANA) operate a mix of Boeing and Airbus jets. However, due to the advanced age and smaller number of Airbus aircraft in the fleet, the carrier does not use Airbus’s Skywise predictive maintenance program. Instead, ANA utilizes The Boeing Company’s predictive tools including Airplane Health Monitoring, Self-Service Analytics and Insight Accelerator.
Full Story (Aviation Week)

Airbus Predicts Record Jet Output Post-Pandemic

Reuters reports that Airbus “is sticking to its quest for record jet output after airlines reported glimmers of a post-pandemic recovery this week, and believes engine makers who have questioned its most ambitious proposals will be ‘unable to resist’ demand.” Airbus “has said it hopes to almost double jet production in a few years as borders reopen.”
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Sources: Airbus Tells Suppliers it Plans to Increase A320 Output to 53 Per Month by End of 2022

Reuters reports that Airbus “is asking key suppliers to get ready for a further 18% increase in A320-family jet output by the end of 2022, on top of existing targets for this year, as airlines eye a partial return to normal travel, industry sources said.” The sources said that the new plan would increase output to 53 A320s per month by the end of 2022, though Airbus has only said that it has tentative plans to increase output to 45 by the end of 2021. Currently, output is at 40 A320s per month. Airbus, “which had been enjoying record jet demand before the virus triggered widespread travel bans, cut output of its best-selling model by a third to 40 a month one year ago.”
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Sources Say Airbus Is Favoring Turboprop Model for First Hydrogen Plane

Bloomberg reports that a “turboprop design is gaining momentum within Airbus SE as the solution to its challenge of developing a hydrogen jet by 2035, according to people familiar with the matter.” The “propeller plane would carry around 100 passengers for about 1,000 nautical miles.” The “other two designs are for a 200-seat blended wing, which Airbus has already said it’s unlikely to pursue first due to the challenges of certification, and a more-familiar-looking turbofan approach, which could fly more than 2,000 nautical miles – about two-thirds as far as the company’s mainstay A320 single-aisle jets.” A turboprop plane “would address a smaller market – it could make most hops between European cities, for example, but not fly trans-Atlantic routes or coast-to-coast in the U.S. That makes it less of a threat to conventional jets that go farther and faster.”
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Airbus Accelerates Deliveries in March

Reuters reports that Airbus “accelerated jet deliveries in March, putting it within reach of matching or even eclipsing last year’s first-quarter total, which was only partially affected by the coronavirus crisis, tracking estimates showed on Wednesday.” The company “delivered 122 aircraft in the first three months of 2020.” Airbus “delivered 53 jets in the first two months of 2021 and then accelerated sharply in March, according to industry sources and unofficial estimates.” The planemaker “is expected to update delivery data on Thursday, ahead of quarterly earnings on April 29. Any final delivery data is subject to last-minute changes due to internal auditing.” According to the Airbus Finkenwerder News blog, the company delivered 44 A320 aircraft in March 2021 – nearly double the number that it delivered in January.
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Eurocontrol Says Aviation Industry Could Cut 25% of CO2 Output by 2030 Using Existing Technologies

Aviation International News reports that “every flight operating in Europe could become on average more than 25 percent ‘greener’ by 2030 while using existing technology, according to a new so-called think paper published by Eurocontrol on Tuesday.” The paper “asserts that the aviation industry can make significant progress toward the ‘perfect green flight’ through measures including increased use of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), more efficient use of airspace, and fleet modernization by airlines.” The study “also concluded that emerging aircraft technologies in the form of hybrid, fully electric, and hydrogen airplanes will ‘transform’ aviation during the 20-year period starting in 2030. By 2050, those new airplanes will prevail on short- to medium-haul routes, while SAF use will predominate in long-haul operations.”
Full Story (Aviation International News)

Airbus Predicts Demand for 39,000 New Airliners by 2040

Aviation Week  reported that Airbus forecasted that some “39,000 new airliners will be needed worldwide over the next 20 years.” Airbus “believes there will be demand by 2040 for around 29,700 small aircraft like the Airbus A220, A320 family or Boeing 737 MAX, and for about 5,300 medium-sized aircraft like the Airbus A321XLR, A330neo or Boeing 787-8,” in addition to demand for about 4,000 large aircraft “like the Airbus A350 or Boeing 787-10 and 777X.” Airbus also expects “to see demand for 880 new freighters.”
Full Story (Aviation Week)